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Review: Breckwell Big E Utility Furnace and Home Heater

Reviewed December 06, 2007 by
Basking Lizard

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Breckwell Big E Home Heater
We bought a Big E Home Heater last year. It ran for about 4 months before parts started failing on it. We've replaced the combustion blower twice and the control panel three times, and it continues to malfunction. Currently waiting for Breckwell to get back to us on how they will resolve this, although at this point, we really just want a refund so we can get a stove that actually works. In a nutshell, we highly recommend you stay away from this stove. You are NOT getting a bargain here; DO spend a little more and get a GOOD stove! When this one was running properly, it was still a major headache to deal with.
The design is poorly thought out - ashpan and burnpot is a nightmare to clean (again because of its poor design), and about a third of the pellets bounce right off the burnpot and fall into the ashpan, where they end up being wasted. The glass gets dirty within just an hour of running the stove, and within a day, it is covered in brown deposits to a point where you don't even see the flame inside the firebox.
The option of having a high/low and on/off setting sounds good on paper, but very impractical in a real setting. We bought the stove as a backup heat source when our woodburning furnace is not in operation (e.g. when the wood fire dies out). The on/off setting causes the stove to continually turn on and shut off, which, considering that it takes about 15 minutes for the stove to come on and another 15 minutes for it to shut off, is very annoying when the stove is in your living room where you are having to hear it start up and shut off, plus it only runs for about 20-30 minutes at a time. While it does do the job of maintaining room temperature, the stove's incessant start up and shut off is not only annoying but a real energy hog. The high/low setting is ideal for preventing this, but the stove has to be manually turned on to operate on this setting. Breckwell really should consider creating just one setting that is a merge of the on/off and high/low setting.